


I'm Not Alone Cause I Wanna Be Alone (It's Just The Way It Went Down)

by Miss_Glass_Doll



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - NHL, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dex Never Went To College AU, Grief/Mourning, I know the point of this is ANGST but I feel so bad about leaving them like this, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Minor Chris "Chowder" Chow/Caitlin Farmer, Minor Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Miscommunication, Multi, Off Screen Death of a Soulmate?, Off-screen Relationship(s), Stream of Consciousness, Unrequited Soulmates, Very little dialogue, losers keeping secrets, the tone shifts completely at one point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25725994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Glass_Doll/pseuds/Miss_Glass_Doll
Summary: It's almost poetic.Derek Nurse meets his soulmate when he is thirty years old and getting his nose broken in a fight. It's the third period of game five, the Aces' goalie just got hauled away by a medic, and it's clear as day to see that William Poindexter is out for blood.
Relationships: Chris "Chowder" Chow/Caitlin Farmer, Derek "Nursey" Nurse/William "Dex" Poindexter, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 14
Kudos: 87
Collections: Check Please Heartbreak Fest 2020





	I'm Not Alone Cause I Wanna Be Alone (It's Just The Way It Went Down)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ekleipsis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekleipsis/gifts).



> AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!  
> I'm suddenly reminded why I don't write angst often!! I felt so bad!!! I want so much for these boys to be happy!!  
> But honestly, I had so much fun playing in this universe! Like I have so many notes and ideas left.  
> Hope you like this, ekleipsis!!

William Poindexter has had two soulmarks in his life, a rarity in and of itself. The first one, the most _visible_ one, always warm and steady, withered and turned grey before he started high school. He went cold and numb as Carson, written in swooping cursive across his left knuckles, lost color while Will was at practise. 

He collapsed on the ice in the middle of a drill.

They say there's no worse pain than losing a soulmate. That it cuts deep and might never heal over. That evening in the rink is where people in town said Will's anger came from. Where his need to _fight_ and to _bruise_ and to _defend_ came from. 

Whenever family or well-wishers from town or less than well-meaning classmates would pluck up the courage to ask how _he's doing/what it feels like/what's Will going to do now?_ it took years before there would be any answer other than anger or grief, or a quiet sob against his cousin's shoulder because " _they were so scared._ " and there was absolutely nothing Will could have done to save them. He might have never met Carson, he might not know how they died, but like hell would he let anyone else he cared about go down like that.

Will's second soulmark, Derek, written in a blocky scrawl of uneven letters across his right collarbone, left Will feeling spacey and unbalanced whenever he concentrated on it too long. After Carson, it took almost two years for Will to stop covering Derek's name in gauze and oversized bandages and high enough shirt collars just so he wouldn't have to see it every time he looked down. 

By the time the recruiters in Quebec caught wind of the angry defenseman in Maine with a solidly _offensive_ play, it was only a matter of time before they started showing up at his games. His billet home for Juniors ended up being just a six and a half hour drive away, so Will let himself concentrate on his last mark carefully hidden under a fully buttoned flannel and let his mind drift the entire drive.

Through the years, as he went from community teams to Juniors to the Draft, Will kept Derek a secret. Kept his name covered and hidden even from his teammates. Let others think Carson's name was his only mark. Let the pity drip from those around him who only saw scarred cursive on clenched fists and not dark letters stretched across stark bone. By the time Will's accepting a jersey on stage and pulling a green cap over his hair to the blinding flash of cameras, it felt like an ending. 

He wished he could have met either of them.

_/_/_/

Will turned twenty and is one of two players traded to the Bruins after a year in the AHL and one with the Stars. It was the kind of trade that made no sense on paper, but somehow found a way to work. Even if Will was hardly able to stand the majority of his new teammates and took next to no care to not let them know.

That same year, Hockey Prince Jack Zimmerman signed with the Falconers in Providence and a photographer managed to get a shot of the Eric written on his ribs. It's considered one of the biggest NHL scandals since his overdose. 

Soulmarks are considered more or less sacred up until you enter the public eye. Most people prefer to keep their marks hidden until they meet even without media scrutiny being a factor. The news broke on a Wednesday just before the Bruins left their locker room for practice and all of a sudden, it made sense why the Zimmermans made such an effort to keep their son's mark a secret. After all, Will knows the NHL has never been the most _accepting_ place in the world. The room he stood in at the time, halfway padded up for practice and hearing the _remarks_ his teammates made being a prime example. The revelation of _Eric_ really brought a lot of things into perspective. 

Not long after the pictures were posted, the major theories of who _Eric_ could be arose from all the usual sources. Some of the bigger tabloids and voices even went so far as to track a few of them down. There was, of course, quite a bit of backlash from both Zimmermans' teams and from most of the individuals themselves. Part of the dedicated, but less zealous, crowd was a handful of users crossposting on Twitter and a blogging site called Tumblr that had clocked _Eric Bittle_ , a YouTube baking vlogger and ex-teammate, as Zimmerman's soulmate. 

The rumours picked up and circulated for the majority of the year before being confirmed after the Falconers win the Stanley Cup against the Schooners and Zimmerman kisses Bittle on center ice. To say the League was not happy being blindsided like that would be the understatement of the decade. 

_/_/_/

Will was twenty three the first time he met Chris Chow. Bright and excitable and just as _weird_ as you can expect a goalie to be. He had been a recent trade from Toronto to the Kings in LA when they met after a home game for Will and the Aces. 

Caitlin Farmer, a PhD candidate at UC Long Beach and Chow's soulmate, is the one to ultimately introduce them. After he and Jeff Troy had snuck out to a bar to avoid most of the post-game interviews, Will and Caitlin had struck up a conversation while waiting for the bartender. Will recognized the Endangered Maine Lobster patch on her jacket and couldn't help but ask questions. 

The last summer before he joined the NHL, there had been a couple dozen groups that hung around the docks and beach where his uncles kept their boats. All wearing or displaying similar patches or flags. They had been studying something, but Will's uncles always told him not to talk to the researchers. That they were only there to cause trouble. 

About a half hour after the two had transitioned back to Will's table, Caitlin gets a text and says she'd be coming right back to finish schooling Jeff on shark habits. The two had been going on quite the rampage over the validity of teaching the public that sharks were bad and dangerous. So far, it seemed like Caitlin, the actual scientist in the group, was winning. By the time he realized who Caitlin went to get though, Will half expected a lot more animosity than excitement when Chow appeared at the table.

That was, of course, not the case.

Loud and boisterous and seemingly just excited at being alive, Chris Chow felt like a sucker punch of sunshine. He seemingly held no ill-will towards Will and Jeff, or any of the Aces, even went so far to come off as excited that Caitlin made some new _Hockey Friends_ while he was talking with fans. 

The conversation flowed easily between the four of them, no awkward pauses or lapses with hasty cover-ups that Will's grown used to, even to the point where they all exchanged contact information before Chris and Caitlin had to leave to sleep off the alcohol before the drive home in the morning. There was no hesitation in the way Chris had pulled Will and Jeff into a hug and loudly proclaimed them all as friends before climbing into the Uber. 

There was even a group chat by morning. 

  
  


_/_/_/

  
  


The national average age when meeting your soulmate in the United States is twenty four and a half. There are outliers in either direction, of course, but the closer Will gets to twenty five, the more that voice in the back of his head that says he missed any chance of getting a fairytale ending with his soulmates the second he chose the Draft over college, gets just a little bit louder. 

It's not just the reality of seeing Chris and Caitlin together, at seeing how perfectly matched they are and how effortlessly they engage with each other. And it's not seeing Bittle and Zimmerman proudly displayed on magazine covers and so absolutely _comfortable_ in their relationship and in themselves after all the shit they went through coming out. It's not even seeing the way Kent is so much lighter and so much _happier_ , even if he and his soulmate want to keep things quiet and under wraps for a while.

No, ultimately, it's the way Will knows he isn't available in any of the ways that matter in a relationship. He's notoriously distant, and angry, and has trouble expressing even simple emotions without flustering. And it's in the way Will has cultivated a reputation for being ruthless and aggressive and flighty since his start in the Q; he knows he wouldn't handle the kind of scrutiny his status in the League would bring with any kind of grace. And it's the way he knows he's never managed to move on from _Carson_ , even so many years later. 

At this point in his life, Will's resigned himself to the reality that even if he managed to find Derek, to find the person who’s shadow always radiates warmth against his chest and helps Will clear his mind when he's freaking out, he's not in a position to be able to offer what Derek would deserve in a soulmate. 

Because he's absolutely sure Derek will one hundred percent deserve better than Will could ever give him.

_/_/_/

  
  


It's _almost_ poetic. 

Derek Nurse meets his soulmate when he is thirty years old and getting his nose broken in a fight. It's the third period of game five, the Aces' goalie just got hauled away by a medic, and it's clear as day to see that William Poindexter is out for blood. The refs are quick to action after they hit the ice, but not quick enough for Nurse's stomach to not drop to his skates and definitely not quick enough for him not to see the infamous _Carson_ before his nose crunches under freckled fists. 

It's almost _poetic_. 

It's no secret that Derek's soulmate's name is _William_. That information had been outed while he was still in Andover, and easy enough now to discover with a quick Google search. His mark is no secret at this point, and it caused plenty of problems that he had to skirt around when Derek first signed with the Schooners after graduating. Less known is the way his mark always feels so comfortingly cold, like the feeling of stepping on the ice without his pads on, and the way concentrating on it would leave Derek feeling off kilter and jumbled, like someone stuffed a bucket full of emotions in a blender and pressed puree.

_It's almost poetic._

Really, it's almost fucking poetic that the impression of a person that spawned Derek's deep dive into literature, that fuelled his love of poetry, that made him decide on English as a major in college, would pull such a Shakespearean move and _not be marked for him too_. 

It's always a possibility. Having an incomplete soulbond isn't unheard of. Marks can be mismatched, and marks can be rejected, and sometimes people can just die before meeting. There's plenty of people in the world in healthy, loving relationships with mismatched or non corresponding marks. Hell, there's plenty of people who's relationship with their soulmate isn't romantic at all. There is more than a solid precedent to it, but the logistics of the situation is not the problem here.

No, the problem here is that not only is Derek's mark mismatched, not only does he have a bond with someone who doesn't have a connection to him, but that he's marked for someone who already _lost_ _their soulmate._

Everyone knows that the Aces' first line D-Man lost his soulmate when he was a kid. It was half of all the press he got in Juniors, and all anyone could talk about after he was drafted. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone familiar with Hockey that _didn't_ know about the washed out _Carson_ on number Twenty-Four's left hand. Especially given that Poindexter has _never_ spoken about it. 

Derek's nose hasn't stopped bleeding and a medic is shining a flashlight in his eyes, and he doesn't actually remember getting off the ice, but he's sitting on an exam table now with the overhead lights turned off. They want him to go in for an MRI, to make sure the inevitable concussion doesn't have any complications. Unfortunately, the woozy feeling in Derek's stomach and shakiness in his hands are probably attributed to the two seconds _before_ his helmet came off, and not the two after.

_/_/_/

The Aces go on to win the Stanley Cup that summer. Beating out the Blues in Game Five with a 3-2 lead just a minute into overtime. Derek doesn't get to watch it, still recovering from his concussion and limited in his allowed screen time. What he does see is a text from Fozzy, a new forward on his team that had been traded from the Bruins last season, saying he talked with Poindexter earlier. Saying that Poindexter would like to apologize and would it be cool to just give him Derek's number? And, apparently, because Derek's life is determined to play at being a romantic tragedy, he tells Fozzy to go ahead.

The worst that can happen is he and Poindexter talk just this once and it's weird and awkward and they never do it again. Derek can live with that. Maybe. Maybe this could at least lead to them being friends. Because at the very least, having the redhead as a friend would be worlds better than not having him in his life at all. 

It’s not like Derek expected to even be able to have a relationship with William if he ever found him. He did, back in school, have the hopes and the dreams that his moms had raised him with of finding his soulmate and building a life with them. But he’s more than come to terms with the fact that he signed that future away when he decided to play Hockey professionally. Derek understands what he did; he’s made peace with it a long time ago.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the panic doesn’t set in. Almost as soon as Fozzy says goodnight, Derek’s calling Bitty in Canada to fake keeping his cool while he hyperventilates about _finding his soulmate who wants to apologize for punching him in the face._ Derek thought he did pretty well at hiding how much he’s falling apart at the situation, but just like when they were still in school, Bitty saw right through him. After all of Bitty’s reassurances, though, Jack is the one to offer an actual game plan for the situation. 

Don’t go in expecting anything more than what Poindexter had already stated. He wants to apologize, probably for the fight last week and injuring Derek. Jack’s known Poindexter for years, he knows him way more than Nursey does. He's a modest guy, not very confrontational off the ice. Very matter of fact, no nonsense, and willing to admit when he’s wrong.

Don’t say anything about soulmates if he doesn’t first. Just because he’s Derek’s soulmate doesn’t mean that William felt anything on his end. That also doesn’t mean that William doesn’t know, though. Sometimes one way connections can still be felt even if nothing comes of it.

Try not to freak out too much. This might be a huge situation for Derek, but it’s just an apology call for Poindexter. There’s no saying how exactly it will go, but with any luck, they might at least come out as friends.

Later, with Jack’s advice knocking around in his head and Bitty’s promises of pie still fresh in his ear, Derek talks himself down from another panic attack. He can do this. He’s been preparing for this for _eight years_. 

_Poindexter isn’t special._

The call doesn’t come in for two more days. It’s an unknown number with a Vegas area code at noon and Derek almost doesn’t answer. Almost.

“Yeah?”

“ _Hey. Nurse?_ ”

“Poindexter. Congrats on the win.”

“ _Thanks. Uh… I guess Fozzy told you why I was calling…”_

The call lasts twelve minutes. It’s easy enough to talk through, Poindexter says his sorrys and the two of them call no fouls. They part on good terms. Afterwards, Derek saves Poindexter’s number.

Neither of them brought up soulmates.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you guys thought!


End file.
